Big time bloggers to their readers - You Suck!

how can you say shoemoney is better at teaching then doing? I would say just the opposite! He runs 5 companies and just sold 1 for 15 million earlier this year. He needs to teach more and do less

Fair comment James, my point about teaching is directed at the “interacting in the comments in your own blog” thing, rather than teaching about how to make money or blogging or whatever.

Look, Shoemoney has more respect from me than most of the rest of those bloggers, simply because he’s not about teaching you how to make money, he’s about showing you what he’s done, and in some cases, how he did it.

All of the blogs in the list provide great information, some of them just fall down on this issue.

A few comments:

1. guilty as charged - I do struggle to comment on every post, partly due to busyness and partly due to the overwhelming number of comments to respond to.

2. on the other hand - I kind of like that my blog doesn’t rely upon me making comments. I’ve worked hard to create a blog where readers feel empowered to answer each other’s comments and where everyone feels that we know a lot more together than any one person knows.

3. When I do comment - I tend to do it like this and make multiple comments at once. If you count that one comment differently it could actually count for 10. I find this style of commenting easier to manage.

4. My commenting rate varies from week to week. On weeks that I’m sick, busy, away etc - it obviously goes down. The other time it goes down is when I feature guest bloggers. I allow them to do their own replying to comments. On average this is 10-20% of my blog’s posts.

Lastly - guilty as charged. Thanks for the reminder to get my commenting back on track. Appreciate it.

Hi Darren, I appreciate you taking the time to drop by!

You make a good point with point 3, A couple of the bloggers on the list comment in this way. Maybe I should have taken that into account.

On your point 4, do you think that your readers come to have their questions answered by other readers, or to find out what Darren has to say? Is it not more of a forum where you get to set the agenda, rather than a blog in this scenario?

Just wondering, I think this raises an interesting point…

This is a very interesting post and right on the money.

good stuff although I answer multiple comments in one response by me, keeps down the comment noise, so I think I respond to more than 21%, even if it’s justa “thanks”

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My personal percentage is probably on the order of 50%, or 1 to 1, but that’s only because I have little traffic and virtually no comments. I think that as my traffic (and subsequent commenting) rises, it will probably settle down to a more typical number. Like Darren and many others I will be clumping my comment responses, so if 3 people leave comments while I’m away, I will answer them all in one comment, rather than on a 1 to 1 ratio.

Replying to comments when you’ve only got a few is easy enough to do, but trying to raise those percentages to similar levels when you’re facing hundreds of comments must be daunting and I think unreasonable to expect.

I can’t imagine it would leave much time for much else!

The volume of comments might change, but we’ve all still got the same 24-hours in a day (hired help not included).

As for not practising what they preach, I don’t really think they’re targetting bloggers who regularly receive dozens or comments on each post.

Interesting stats, but I don’t believe they are telling the whole story.

I think I respond to about half the comments on one of my busier sites, and I get more comments when I don’t do that. I think the big guys know something we don’t, and we should learn from their example, not what they say.

My turn to use the “multiple replies in one comment” thing:

@ Mark (45N5) - “thanks!”

@ Marc - You’re right, it is easy when you don’t get many comments, and each one is exciting, it does get harder as time goes by and a blog grows.

@ Will - The point I was trying to make is that on some of these blogs, there is absolutely zero interaction with the readers once the post is written. By having no interaction with the readers after the post is written, one must wonder if the blogger is even reading the comments. This being the case, I wonder where the value for the commenters is? I can leave a comment on a blog which won’t be responded to by the author, and my link will be nofollowed (generally) to boot. I just can’t see the value, I’d rather leave my comments on a smaller blog where there’s more likely to be a conversation.

@ Sapphire - Are you suggesting we just ignore the comments our visitors leave?

A lot comes down to the kind of comment left by people as to whether it should be responded to, and in what way.

Also with threaded comments side conversations can develop and some enthusiastic commenters can get a little carried away.

Occasionally there are also responses by email

The biggest challenge is how to respond to links, and noticing links that are to a root domain among the rest of the clutter can be a challenge.
Of course my favorite way to respond to links these days is just to Sphinn or Stumble the post, which in some ways is a win/win situation.

It’s a quiet new year resolution of mine. Responding to comments whether it be on your own blog or others (and zapping spam comments out of the conversation) is a key piece of advice for any budding blogger.

Good research - It’s worth pointing out Andy Beard takes the time to comment on a lot of blogs other than his own.

Shaun

My percentage is probably 50%, because I answer all comments. It is true that I don’t have so many of them, and that I’m online almost all the time, so answering is not that hard. However, I can understand that people who get lots of comments, like Darren and Shoemoney, don’t answer many of them. If you look at their blogs’ comments, you’ll see that many people just want to get noticed, they don’t really want an answer. My readers don’t want just to be noticed, so their comments are much more to the point and willing to start (or to continue) a dialog. It’s a small community, so communications are done more easily.

Well for me I reply almost all of the comments on my blog

@ Andy - I’m not a big fan of threaded comments (I don’t ge enough comments to make it worthwhile), maybe I’m stupid (Mrs. PimpMyPageRank would agree…), but I actually find them harder to follow.

Interesting what you say about sphinning and stumbling posts, I appreciate your sphinn and stumble of my post about page load size, I’m still getting stumbled traffic from that, and that was about a month ago!

@ Hobo - It’s my resolution as well. I completely understand your point about Andy, I’m amazed at how he finds the time to write a pretty damned good blog, whilst leaving great tomes of text in the comments sections of a boatload of other blogs. (You rock, Andy! )

@ Simonne - You’re definitely right, it’s much easier when there’s only a few comments. The issue I was trying to highlight is that a blog without much interaction from the blogger in the comments section is more of a forum than a blog.

If everyone subscribed to keyword alerts instead of individual rss feeds that create legacy and echo chamber behavior, people’s view of the world would not only be different, it would give them a better view of what is going on.

You might like to consider it.

Get that warm fuzzy feeling that you’re contributing to their blog? That you’re somehow shaping the direction that these blogs take? Think again.

The title of this post is misleading and inaccurate. I always respond to multiple comments in a single comment, although I haven’t been doing that for the last few posts.. been busy.

It’s a huge jump to assume that the blogger in question doesn’t read all the comments or isn’t influenced by the comments left by the readers. Or that they think the readers suck.

In fact, I do a fair bit of comment responding via email. Again something that is not visible to any observer and another factor that isn’t calculated in your analysis, which is a generalization at best.

But thanks for the reminder. I should probably get back to my blog and do some emailing/commenting now.

Well, i see you have taken the time to respond to almost all the comments on this post. I hope you keep up the spirit. But as the time goes by and you get into mainstream blogging, you cant really respond to all the comments.

However, I can say from my own experience, not all comments on the blog are worth a response. Also, Multiple responses in a single comment should have been taken into consideration.

All and all this is an interesting observation. Original thinking!

I can understand why some don’t keep up.
I do my best, but sometimes they just stack up on you, or there’s nothing to say.

My personal guilt lies in letting a couple direct questions sit in the queue until I have a chance to respond. They DO get responded to though.

@ David - Subscribing to keyword alerts would just fill my reader with spam from splogs.

@ Maki - You may be right, the title may be a little over the top, but I stand by the message. Regardless of the mitigating circumstances, the stats don’t lie. The majority of top bloggers in the “make money online” sphere simply don’t respond much to the comments in their blogs. End of story.

@ Vikram - You’re right, not all blog comments are worthy of a response, but these type of comments are usually flying pretty close to the spam line anyway, so they don’t last long here.

@ SlightlyShady - I understand your point, especially with a blog like yours which has seen almost surreal growth. (I love your blog by the way, when I see a new post in my reader it’s the first one I hit! )

Regardless of the mitigating circumstances, the stats don’t lie. The majority of top bloggers in the “make money online” sphere simply don’t respond much to the comments in their blogs. End of story.

Your title is not a little over the top. It is way over the top. The correlation between comment response and blogger perspective towards their audience is very weak.

But I can understand that its written to get attention.

I remember the other time I was over on your blog last year, you were attacking my post on Alexa as well. Do you have some personal distaste for me, for some reason?

Nobody is talking about mitigating circumstances or making up excuses. You are coming to a conclusion on a topic (bloggers don’t care about their audience) simply based on what you observe, which omits a lot of other invisible data.

It is what it is. Everyone has a different reality. It’s ridiculously easy to talk your talk when you have less than 10 comments for each post. Don’t expect people in other circumstances to conform to your expectations.

[…] Is responding to your readers in comments really all that? Sometimes I think your voice has such “authority” on your own blog that it can seem not friendly but more like the boss walking in on mailroom chatter. […]

I think most of these people do not respond to there comments cause they have a number of other websites out there that they are trying to generate money from. It seems like they could really careless about the reader, they only want them there to click on there ads.

What the fail to recognize is that if you do not pay attention to your comments those readers are going to soon go somewhere else.

@ Maki - No, the posts wasn’t written to get attention. It was pure observation. The fact that it’s getting some is just gravy!

As to my having a personal distaste for you, I’ve mentioned you what, three times in 544 posts. One of those posts talked about your post about gaming alexa which, at the time, I thought was stupid. One talked about how you’d gained an awesome alexa ranking in a very short period of time, and the other was this post.

I think it says more about you than me that you’re the only person out of the eight bloggers I analyzed who has taken offence. Four of the bloggers responded, four didn’t. Of the four that did, Darren was philosophical, Mark was fine, and Andy Beard was analytical, as usual, and you got upset.

As far as my expecting people to conform to my expectations, where did I say I expected that? I couldn’t give a hoot what people do with their blogs, and hell, all these bloggers have a lot more readers than me, so they’re (including you) obviously doing something (a lot of things, actually) right.

I just think it’s a little disrespectful to blog readers to drop a post, then go off and do other things and (pretty much) ignore the conversation that ensues.

Once again, I stand by the post.

Thanks for dropping by, appreciate your thoughts.

@ Robert - I’m not sure that the bloggers don’t care about their readers, I think that their priorities might be a little different, but they do care about their readers. As far as them losing readers by continuing this trend, I think these blogs reach a critical mass, where it would take a series of really dumb moves on the part of the blogger to lose a lot of readers.

I think it says more about you than me that you’re the only person out of the eight bloggers I analyzed who has taken offence. Four of the bloggers responded, four didn’t. Of the four that did, Darren was philosophical, Mark was fine, and Andy Beard was analytical, as usual, and you got upset.

It says more about me than you? Just what are you insinuating? That I can’t take criticism? Puhleeze. You can’t possibly expect me to write a post claiming that I (and other bloggers) don’t care about our readers and then expect me to say.. ‘you’re absolutely right and I’m a heartless tool’.

I’m an opinionated person like you and I don’t cave in to points of view I don’t agree with. I respect you for having your voice and for breaching this issue of comment response and I would appreciate if you respected my right to a differing opinion as well, even if it seems to come from an ‘upset voice’.

My response is just as legitimate as that of the other bloggers and I don’t think you should insinuate that I am acting out of line or this reflects badly on my character. Note how I’ve not attacked you personally but only the post in question. Not once have I accused you of something you’ve not done as well.

If you are going to criticize someone, expect a response in return in your comments section. Don’t insinuate that someone is ‘upset’..which somehow means that he is unable to take criticism and is hence acting out of hand.

You can choose to censor or delete my comments if you want but I have an opinion about your article and I am going to express it. I’m not Andy, Darren or Mark so don’t think I’m going to act like them in anyway. They are gonna roll over and take it, but I aint’.

I’m not going to be sorry for not behaving differently. Seriously… I don’t think there’s a right protocol on the way to act in these kinds of situations.

I’m trying very hard to take this as constructive criticism. Note how I even thanked you for the reminder.

I apologize if I come across as harsh but seriously, I put a lot of goddamn energy, sweat and blood into my blog and I am concerned about my audience. To suggest that I don’t irritates me to no end.

Once again its just my opinion, don’t take it too seriously but please don’t just see me as raving, aggressive nutjob. I ain’t one and I ain’t just pushing this issue for fun just to piss you off. Not looking for any bad blood, just needed to explain how I felt about your article and how you should try to filter in my perspectives as well.

Cheers.

Maki,

Firstly, I will not, don’t, and never have, censor comments. Your opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s, and censoring different points of view would make for a pretty boring discussion.

I’ve given a little more thought to your question in a previous comment as to whether I had a personal problem with you. What you need to understand here is that this post looked at 8 bloggers from the 45N5 toplist. If you weren’t in the list, you wouldn’t have been in the post. So from that perspective, it’s nothing personal.

No, I’m not suggesting that you can’t take criticism. What I am suggesting is that you reacted far more strongly than anyone else who was mentioned in the post. I’m not saying that that’s a good thing or a bad thing, just a fact. I’ve quite enjoyed our two “run-ins” over the last year or whatever it’s been. We see so little reasoned, but passionate discourse in the blogosphere, it’s a pleasure to be a part of it.

As far as you thanking me for the reminder, I can honestly say that I missed that in the original comment. Maybe I need to write a post about bloggers who don’t pay the requisite attention to the comments in their blogs? I apologise for missing that sentence, I can’t be sure, but I’m reasonably confident that it would have changed the tone of my response to your comment.

I apologize if I come across as harsh but seriously, I put a lot of goddamn energy, sweat and blood into my blog and I am concerned about my audience.

I know you do, read my latest post about bloggers reading make money blogs. Your blog is one of the mentioned dozen or so blogs in my reader.

I’m glad you care so deeply about your readers, and are prepared to stand your ground to say that you do.

I apologise for my aggression in dealing with you.

Cheers

Stu

[…] came across a posted titled “Big time bloggers to their readers - You Suck!.” It is a post by Stuart on Pimp My Page Rank focusing on how the “Big time” […]

I don’t blog anymore, but when I did I replied to everyone. No matter how long it took. When you don’t, people know you don’t care about what they have to say. Then no bond is formed, and then you lose readers.